Cancer Drug Research Group Dismantled

More than two-dozen members of a cancer drug research group at Arizona State University (ASU) have lost their jobs in what observers say is an escalating battle between a prominent organic chemistry professor and the university's administration.

An ASU spokesman says the group, based at the Tempe campus and headed by George R. Pettit, was dissolved because it wasn't able to renew its funding from federal grants. Pettit's supporters say personal clashes have fueled the university's real aim: to supplant Pettit's original Cancer Research Institute (CRI) with ASU's much larger, new facility, the Biodesign Institute.

On Jan. 27, 31 of Pettit's research professors, postdocs, students, and staff, whose salaries are paid by grant money, say they were told they would be given 30 days' severance pay. They were locked out of their labs immediately, and their e-mail accounts were canceled, they say. Nine researchers from the group remain at ASU, and a handful of students and staff will be incorporated into other university labs, ASU officials say. Pettit remains at ASU as a tenured professor.

Research professor Thomas H. Smith, one of those ousted, who has been in Pettit's group for more than two years, says the group was aware of brewing trouble, "but it was a shock that it happened as suddenly as it did."

Pettit has been at ASU since 1965 and has directed CRI since 1975. His group has several anticancer drugs in clinical trials. Recently, Pettit locked horns with ASU's new president, Michael M. Crow, and other officials. Last year, CRI was incorporated into the Biodesign Institute and renamed the Center for Cancer Research (CCR).

Last June, Pettit was removed from his endowed Dalton Chair of Cancer Research & Medicinal Chemistry and from the directorship of CCR. Pettit responded with a lawsuit, still pending, against ASU. Then, following a lab safety inspection, Pettit's accounts were frozen, and the group was unable to obtain further funding, lab members say.

C&EN was unable to reach Pettit, and ASU administrators referred requests for comment to Virgil Renzulli, vice president for public affairs at ASU, who says, "We are not happy that people had to be laid off from that lab."